


A word more true than love

by HarkerX



Series: The Yellow Notebook [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: AU, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Will Graham, Dom/sub Undertones, Hannibal is Hannibal, Knotting, M/M, Masturbation, Mating, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Not Canon Compliant, References to Knotting, Top Hannibal Lecter, Will is a Mess, Will's Yellow Notebook, no murder on the menu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 21:46:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15894756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarkerX/pseuds/HarkerX
Summary: “You know how to ask for what you need, yes?“Yes.”“If you need release?”It’s a conversation they’ve had before. An exchange Hannibal has drilled into Will but for some reason…for some reason Will doesn’t listen. “I come to you.”“If you need comfort?”“I come to you.”“And if you wake up, wanting to pick fights with me?”“I ask instead for release or comfort.”





	A word more true than love

**Author's Note:**

> The first draft of this veered a little into dub-con because alpha/omega but i think i fixed that? So, maybe a slight TW due to alpha/omega but no one does anything against their want/will and no one was harmed in the making of this fic. 
> 
> Except Hannibal is Hannibal.
> 
> The yellow notebook is intended as a series of standalones, and is chronological, but does assume (even though it's slight AU and non-canon-compliant) you've seen the series.

Will touches the scar on his neck. Two parallel, co-existing lines, one deeper than the first and that was the second cut and while the first was him, the second was for Hannibal.

Is Hannibal.

He leans into the tile, warm water courses over him, all the soft and hard edges. Rain. Tears. This sadness. This unexpected vacancy that exists just behind his heart. This feeling of not being enough.

“Will,” Hannibal calls to him.

It takes him a second, but then he turns off the water, towels off. Pulls on his white t-shirt, his jeans.

Stretches, as if adjusting his skin. His mouth is salt.

The first heat he went through with Hannibal was both with and without Hannibal. Hannibal was a presence, a protector, a guardian, a gargoyle perched in the corner, keeping watch.

The second came five weeks later. Hannibal observed and when Will asked, he participated. When Will asked, Hannibal mounted him. Hannibal knotted and fucked him and worked Will until he was shivering, shaking, trembling on the floor, a mess of semen and slick, until Hannibal’s name became wind, a long, low howl through leafless trees.

Hannibal’s Alpha kept silent. 

This, Will recorded in his little yellow notebook.

The third time was the same as the second. And now they are here and Will’s oncoming heat is prickling, dancing along his skin.

On the way downstairs, he stops in their room and makes another note in the little yellow notebook. Date. Time. His heat will rise slowly over the next day or so and then become unbearable. Hannibal will mount him and fuck him and when it’s over, there will still be this scar on Will’s neck and there will be bruises, and he will reek of spend and slick but there will no other telltale marks.

There will be no  reminder of Hannibal’s teeth, no always-there, no proof to anyone that he belongs to someone.

All Will wants is for his body to call his Alpha’s rut, for his heat and his want to pull the beast from Hannibal.

Mark and mate.

Will pushes back his too-long hair.

On the kitchen table there is a note.

 

_Office._

_-H_

#

Hannibal sits in metal and leather. One wall is crimson, the other grey, the colour of a body long bled out. Will notes the distance between the two chairs. Hannibal moves them sometimes, farther and closer, depending on the day. Depending on the conversation. Today they are at their mid-point.

Will has noted this in his little yellow book. Mid-point is intimacy. Mid-point is a conversation Will is not going to like.

Mid-point is a conversation Hannibal and Will are going to have no matter Will’s feelings on the subject.

“Sit,” the man says.

Will shoves his hands into his pockets. “Are we talking today?”

“Hrm,” Hannibal says. “When you sit.”

“So if I stand?”

“Then you stand all day. And I will go about my business and when I am done and I return to this room, I will expect you to be as you are.” He looks up. Taps the posted end of his pen on the edge of his own leather-bound notebook. A drop of ink falls from the nib. “Will.” He checks his watch. “Your oncoming heat is making you difficult.”

It’s been weeks since his last. There’s been moments when he thought it would come, when the air changed and his bones felt too big for his body, a wolf trying to escape man-form but even then. Even then it was a trick, the way shadows are, the way they can make you believe someone else is the room but it’s only moonlight. “I’m not in—”

“I can smell you, Will. If you expect me to participate in your heat, you will participate in this conversation.”

Fucking Hannibal. Fucking Hannibal who knows what not being in heat was doing to him, and fucking Hannibal who knows what Will wants now is not the separation of Alpha and Omega. When he came here, months ago, it was to understand his heat response around an Alpha. His Alpha. Now, he knows. Now he understands the place where gender and sexuality, Omega and desire meet and it’s in this house and it’s under the hands of this man and _fuck you_ , he wants to say, because not being bonded to Hannibal is killing him, and Hannibal knows that but he can’t. He can’t because bonded is not owned and he is and…

So he sits in his chair.

“Thank you,” Hannibal says.

The mark on Will’s neck, the scars Hannibal gave him to mimic a bond-bite, healed as expected and scarred as was wanted. When he looks at Hannibal’s knife work, he sees Hannibal’s blade and Hannibal’s hands and Hannibal’s mouth and remembers the salt wet of blood on his tongue. He remembers the scent of his Alpha, and how he smelled, for just a moment, like rut.

“What do you want?” Will asks, finally.

Hannibal lays down his pen. “You’re angry.”

“Ornery,” Will says. “Complicated, according to you.”

“You would argue that point?”

Would he? He’s not even sure why he’s trying to pick a fight, he just knows that he is. “You just used my heat as a bargaining chip.”

Hannibal’s eyebrow lifts. “No, I used my participation in your heat as a bargaining chip. Your heat, as we are both well aware, will happen regardless.”

_We should work on having you coincide with my rut._

It is a sentence in Will’s notebook.

Alignment of heat and rut was what Hannibal wanted. To work on Will, to make his heat malleable, for Will to respond to Hannibal as both as Omega to Alpha as man to man. Hannibal wanted no division, no divide, no space between them, no idea of Alpha and Omega.

And for that, they would need to be bonded.

“Suppressants work on Alphas, too.” It’s not a kind thing to say. It’s not even fair.

“I am not on suppressants, Will.”

“Then where the fuck is your rut?” He stands, pushing back the chair so hard it slides backwards, catching on the rug. “I can’t do this again.”

“Will. Sit, please.”

Will shook his head. “I don’t want to sit. Don’t fucking use my heat as some goddamned tool to control me.”

At that Hannibal stands. Walks to where Will rocks on his heels, hands in his pockets and his shoulders tight. The man has made himself small. Hannibal wraps a hand around the nape of Will’s neck and draws him in. Close. Will stiffens, but he doesn’t pull away.

“Will,” Hannibal says and his breath is warm, black tea and bergamot. “Breathe.”

Will does not want to breathe but the man’s hand acts as an anchor, a hold. “Don’t.”

“Are you asking me to stop touching you?”

Yes. Fuck. No. “Yes” he whispers.

“Then ask me to stop.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “I don’t want you to—”

“No,” Hannibal says. “You don’t.”

Will closes his eyes.

“Do you need me?” Hannibal asks. “Do you need me to touch you?”

Will understands the question. It’s not metaphor, it’s not theoretical. It’s not a generality. “Yes,” Will says because he needs this feeling gone, this impossible, prickling self fucking loathing gone and Hannibal is the only one who has ever been able to make it better. Safe. Will knows it’s because Hannibal is his Alpha. Will knows it’s because it’s Hannibal.

Hannibal murmurs something inaudible and brings his hand to the button of Will’s jeans. He fiddles with the button hole, the zipper, slips a hand inside and frees Will’s cock. “Do you need me?”

Will nods, slowly. Hannibal’s hands make everything better. “Yes.”

“Then we will talk?”

Will leans forward, nodding as he presses his mouth to Hannibal’s jaw. It’s answer. Acquiescence. Will bites the other man softly, a gentle nip as if trying to call Hannibal’s beast.

Hannibal cradles Will’s head, sliding his fingers through the dark of Will’s hair. Slowly, Hannibal curls his hand around Will’s half-hard cock. He strokes and kisses Will’s cheek, his forehead. He works Will until he hardens, until his breathing is laboured. Until the room warms with the future-promise of his oncoming heat.

“Yes?” Hannibal asks and Will nods.

Hannibal works his Omega. Will is quiet, trembling. Pearls of pre-come fall onto Hannibal’s fingers and Hannibal murmurs, softly.

When Will comes, it is a sigh. A stutter. Hannibal brings his fingers to Will’s mouth and Will licks them clean, cradled in the crook of Hannibal’s neck, held by his Alpha.

“Better?”

Again, the Alpha disarms the Omega. “Yes.”

“You know how to ask for what you need, yes?”

“Yes.”

“If you need release?”

It’s a conversation they’ve had before. An exchange Hannibal has drilled into Will but for some reason…

for some reason Will doesn’t listen. “I come to you.”

“If you need comfort?”

“I come to you.”

“And if you wake up, wanting to pick fights with me?”

“I ask instead for release or comfort.” Or both, but that’s a given.

“Good,” Hannibal says and he presses his lips to Will’s forehead. “Now, will you sit?”

Will nods, fixing his jeans. He goes to his chair. Drags it back to the mid-point. The room is all soft edges, the red of the drapery bleeds into the grey and Hannibal is everywhere and nowhere all at once. What he wants is to crawl into Hannibal's warmth, into wool and cashmere and silk. 

It’s the man's voice that brings Will back, that interrupts his daydream.

“I have a favour to ask you. In regards to a patient.”

“I’m not board certified.”It’s not unusual for them to talk after Will is sated, after Hannibal has helped him manage the anger, the frustration, cared for the part of Will that is never, ever satisfied. Never quiet. The part of him that claws at Hannibal until they are both bleeding. Will is not good with strangers. “Besides, isn’t there some kind of doctor patient confidentiality thing at work here?”

“The patient is technically no longer my patient. She’s of age. She has given me permission.”

“I don’t need a summer student.”

“I believe she’s an Omega, the traditional age for a female to Omega to present is shortly after their eighteenth birthday.”

“Planning to amass a collection?”

Hannibal ignores the sarcasm, or tries to. Will notices the slight lift of the man’s eyebrow. Hannibal is nothing but a symphony of tiny expressions, an orchestra of emotion on a seemingly blank face.

“Her name is Abigail Hobbs.”

Everything in Will goes still. Hobbs? “I am not acting as a heat surrogate-Alpha for the offspring of Garret Jacob Hobbs.” Sometimes Omegas do, Will knows. Older, fully presented Omegas will work other Omegas through their first heat so there’s no risk of mating, bonding. 

“Will, I would never—”

“No?” Part of him is quite sure that Hannibal would do exactly that. Want exactly that. To put Will in an unfamiliar situation just to see what happens. Hannibal’s notebooks might not be yellow, but Will knows they are the wallpaper in this room, rows upon rows of shiny, black leather.

“Will. You knew her father before he was arrested for murder. That you and he had a pre-trauma connection may provide comfort to Abigail. Abigail was an infant when you and Hobbs met, and she was a child when he was incarcerated. Her feelings of connection may have changed but the love she felt for her father as a child is still quite strong. That you are an Omega who had an intimate connection with her father—”

Will does not let him finish. “I was sixteen. Whatever we did was not intimate. I fixed his rowboat and he fucked me when I presented. What would I talk to her about? Six steps to happiness the lonely Omega way and then casually mention the second time I ever orgasmed without the use of my own hands it was because her father was fist-fucking me?”

Hannibal closes his notebook. “You never told me that.”

“I told you that he knew I’d gone into heat.”

Hannibal’s eyes flash silver. “You told me he fucked you.”

“I assure you, I felt fucked.”

“You did not tell—”

Will taps a nail on the arm of the chair. “Jealous?”

“Of the man who mounted you when I’m the man that gets to keep you?”

But Hannibal is, Will can see it. “It’s a bad idea, Hannibal. Whatever feelings I have towards Hobbs are not warm and they are not fuzzy.” He still sees their time together as consensual, a decision made that he does not regret, but when Hobbs was arrested for murder, it tilted the memories sideways. They don’t feel the same anymore.

“I would like you to talk with her about being Omega and what that means.”

“I am not talking to her about fucking her father.”

“I did not expect you to. That was a leap you took all on your own.”

“You said we had an intimate connection.”

“Yes, he was your neighbour. Your father went fishing with him. Is that not the story you told me?”

Of course it was and Hannibal has the memory of an elephant. “Yeah.”

“A connection that, beyond whatever happened between you and Hobbs, speaks to some semblance of friendship.”

“With my Dad,” Will reminds him.

“With whom you also had a complex, tenuous connection.”

Will drops his head back and stares at the ceiling. “I can’t believe you are going to talk me into this.”

“I felt it would help her.”

Will runs a hand over his forehead and pushes back his hair before he looks at the man again. “And she agreed?” Why would she agree?

“Yes.”

“And you told her who I am?”

“I told her you were my mated Omega.”

Mated. Not bonded. At least Hannibal didn’t totally lie. “When?” Because he knows Hannibal well enough to know the man already made the appointment. Had already confirmed Will’s participation.

“Ten a.m.”

“It’s 9:45.” Will presses the heal of his hand into his eye and sighs.This is Hannibal, working him in circles, walking him through a maze that has a Hannibal waiting at the end, hands in his pockets and a look of amusement on his face.

Will knows Hannibal wouldn’t ask him to talk to the girl unless it was because the man felt it would do Will good, too, but that doesn’t mean he wants to. “You knew I’d say yes.”

“I had hoped.”

“I’ll try not to tell her about the part where you and I can’t bond.”

Hannibal lays his book, his pen down on the small glass table. “You’re angry with me and yet I have done nothing. We both know that coming off suppressants can interupt a normal heat cycle. You also know that there was always a chance it would take months to re-regulate and months still for your heat to trigger my rut. That I can scent your oncoming heat should make you feel safe. My Alpha knows you, Will. I know you. Your heat should not be a thing to dread.”

“I don’t dread it, Hannibal, I dread how I’ll feel after it’s done.”

“Which is?”

“Empty,” he sighs, picking at an errand thread. “Alone. ”

“I am here. I will not abandon you.”

“Part of you.” Will scratches at his scar. “Has abandoned us both.” The second the words are out of his mouth Will regrets it.

Regrets it. But doesn’t apologize.

“You keep dropping this teacup at my feet.” Hannibal sighs. “While expecting me to gather up the shards. Is it because you assume it has no sharp edges?” He flexes his fingers as if looking for scars. “Or is it just that you wish to see me bleed?”

It’s guilt. Ache. The truth of Hannibal and how Hannibal knows him and that it’s only through being with Hannibal that Will truly knows himself.It’s that no one has ever known him, understood him, quite the way Hannibal does. “Hannibal.”

“Will.”

His name as punctuation.

“I thought being here would be easier than not being here.” Except that’s a lie. What Will thought was that somehow, somehow Hannibal would make things easier on him. But Hannibal has never made it easy. 

“You went through your heat without mating to prove you could. To prove you didn’t need me.”

“I needed to understand my feelings for you.”

“And do you?”

Will nods. Hannibal taps his knee. Will’s not sure if it’s just an idle movement, or a request. Here is what he knows about Hannibal: Hannibal litters the path with nails and then opens his arms in welcome.

“You beg for my Alpha, demand my rut and when it does not present you consider it punishment,” Hannibal says. “You consider it a failing.”

“But do I consider it mine or yours?”

The question hangs between them like a noose. Will stands, goes to the window. Pushes aside the drapes and drags a finger over the glass. Draws a line like a sigil, charm and protection. HIs breath is fog. He leans into the cold glass and closes his eyes.

There’s a creak of floorboard. A brush of fabric. Hannibal’s hand at his waist. Will takes a half a step backwards. Hannibal curls his fingers in the waistband of Will’s jeans.

“How would we fix this?”

It’s a kindness for only Will feels broken.

“You already tried.” Because Hannibal brought him to orgasm and for the smallest of moments, it felt like enough.

“Then we’ll try again.”

“We can’t fix everything with sex.”

“What of intimacy?”

There is a knock on the door.

“What?” Will says. “Of Abigail Hobbs?”

#

Will doesn’t follow Hannibal to the door. He turns though, when he hears more than one voice. There’s a girl, dark haired and pale. Another woman stands behind her.If he’d seen the image in a photo album, he’d assume they were family.

“Alana,” Will says and at least Alana has the decency to look sheepish. “Nice to see you. How’s the bed?”

Abigail blinks twice and Alana shakes her head while waving her hand as if trying to erase words from the air. “Will had an extra—”

“I accidentally ordered two from the Internet,” he lies. In reality he never took the one he’d bought out of the box and now he’s at Hannibal’s so much it doesn’t matter.

Then they’re whispering, Hannibal and Alana and Abigail, and Abigail tries to smile, but then she’s pushing hair away from her eyes and tugging down the sleeves of her army-green jacket as if it doesn’t fit. 

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Hannibal says, motioning to Abigail. The man closes the door and Abigail stands there like she’s not sure what to do next.

“We sit in the chairs, usually,” Will says. “But that feels like therapy.”

“Was he your shrink too?” Abigail asks and it’s not a question Will’s sure he can answer but he nods.

“Sometimes. He calls what we do ‘having conversations’ but he’s always going to be my psychiatrist.He told me you were no longer his patient?”

“Yeah, I. I don’t know. I didn’t think I needed him anymore. I’m seeing Alana instead, now.“

Alana. Dad to Mom. There must be a reason. “He seems to think I can help you.”

“He thought talking to an Omega would help make it less scary.”

“Well,” Will waves to himself. “Here I am. I’m not exactly well-adjusted but I’m showing signs of improvement.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“I work at the FBI.”

“Doing what?”

 _Collecting murderers_ , he wants to say, but he doesn’t. “I teach.” That seems to make it okay and maybe Hannibal told her anyway, maybe he told Abigail the truth. “Do you want to sit?” There are the chairs. The blue sofa. The place beneath the curtains where they could sit with their knees to the wall. “Floor? Are you a person who sits on the floor?”

He is. She nods. He goes to where he was just standing and slides down, careful of the drapes.

“This room is intense.” She sits cross-legged and he can’t see her face through the veil of dark hair.

“This room is Hannibal.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Is he my…” Will laughs, touches his chin. “No, I don’t think so. Technically, he’s my mate.”

“Mate is an Omega word.”

“Yes, technically it means a breeding pair.” He’s tried to imagine Hannibal as a father. Hannibal helping with homework. Will would teach the child to fish.

“But you’re both men.”

“Right, so we are a non-breeding mated pair.” So factual. So _set_.

“I don’t want to have children,” she says. “Is it true the Omega always wants an Alpha?”

Is it true. Every hour of every day. “Yes.”

“Oh.”

Will wants to tell her she can fight it, that it can be different, that she can take drugs and other Omegas, or Betas, can help each other and she doesn’t have to be anyone’s victim, but he doesn’t because he’s not sure it’s true anymore. It's not true for him. 

“Are you bonded?”

Will sighs at that. Shifts. Breathes in. There is Abigail’s shampoo, the musk of his own oncoming heat, sandalwood, but that’s Hannibal. Something else, too. His nose twitches. “Not yet.” Like it’s inevitable. There are drugs that could force Hannibal’s rut. Same online store he bought the pheromone masking scent from. Same place he bought the blue butt plug he doesn’t use anymore because Hannibal’s are so much better. “Sometimes it takes a while for Alphas and Omegas to be in sync.” He pauses. “You know you never have to bond with anyone.”

“I haven’t even presented yet,” she says pushing her hair behind her ears. “Genetically, they say I’m Omega, because of my mom and my dad, but maybe…”

The girl could have been genetically tested, or can be, now that she’s over eighteen. Will really doesn’t want to talk about Mrs. Hobbs. Abigail barely looks like her father. In Will’s memories her dad’s hair was lighter, his fingers long and thin. Abigail is softer, but that could just be because she’s young. Younger. Omega. “My dad used to go fishing with your dad.”

Abigail doesn’t say anything for a moment. “I don’t remember my dad fishing.”

“He made his own lures,” Will says and immediately wants to take it back. “With feathers, they were beautiful.” God, he’s making it worse.

“Do you think they can hear us talking?”

Hannibal, Alana. “Maybe they’ve got their ears pressed to the door,” he laughs, and Abigail smiles bright enough that Will feels the slightest tinge of contentment.“I think the room is big enough that they can’t. Are you worried they actually might be listening?”

“A little,” Abigail admits. “You mated with my dad.”

Will coughs so hard he buckles in half. “Abigail—”

“I read his notebook. He wrote about you.”

Maybe that’s where Will got his need to document everything. “Does Hannibal know?” He wants to tell her what he did with Garret Jacob Hobbs wasn’t mating. But in a way it was, if you just count the biology. If you don’t count basic human desire.

If you don’t count love.

Abigail shakes her head. “I never told him. Or Alana.”

“I was a kid.” Then he realizes how that sounds, how Abigail put the blame on Will, not her Dad. _You mated with my Dad_. “I presented early and your Dad—”

“He wrote it all down, what he did with you,” she says, interrupting him. “I’m sorry.”

“I wasn’t,” Will admits because maybe it will make her feel better. “Heat is complicated and I,” he runs a hand through his hair. “Did not expect this to be the conversation.” But did Hannibal?

“It was before he killed that girl.”

“Yeah.”

Abigail would have been a baby. Maybe just born.Will hadn’t even known. Hadn’t ever met her mother.

“Did you love him?”

 _Love him_. It’s how Will knows Abigail is only eighteen, because she read her father’s notebook and asks of love. “At the time, yeah.” Because Will was sixteen and in heat. “For a while, after.”

“Me too,” Abigail says and Will knows she means after her dad was found guilty, after they found the body of the girl in woods near their hunting cabin.“I don’t know anymore.”

“Me either,” Will says and then he stretches out, crossing his legs at the ankles. “Hannibal thought we would talk about fishing or dating, or….” Maybe this was exactly what Hannibal hoped they’d talk about.

“We can, if you want.”

“It would just be a metaphor, I think.” Will tilts his head back. “It’s different with Hannibal, you know?”

“He doesn’t?” She makes a face, wide-eyed and some movement with her hands.

Will’s laugh is immediate and bright. “Oh, no, he definitely does,” and then he blushes and covers his face. “Consent is important, Abigail. Biology will do what it does but that doesn’t mean we don’t have choices within that. It doesn’t make us animals.” Like now, how his heat is poking at him, testing his borders. His Omega scents something new in the air. Maybe Alana, maybe Abigail. It’s different than Hannibal.

“I think I smell you,” Abigail says and then she reaches and tentatively touches the scars on his neck.

Will jumps, an automatic bristle at being touched by anyone that isn’t Hannibal, but then there’s something else. His Omega stands at attention. It’s like an expansion in his chest and it occurs to him he’s never been touched by another Omega, not by anyone in years, really, that isn’t his Alpha.

“Sorry,” Abigail mumbles but Will shakes his head.

“It’s okay.” He shifts and pulls his legs up, wraps his arms around his knees and rests his chin. “I’ll be in heat soon, maybe that’s what you can scent. Hannibal gave me the scars.” Parallel lines. Together but never meeting.

“Wedding rings would hurt less.” She lifts her hand again and then recoils but then she looks one more time. “Can I touch them again?”

He’s not sure why she asks or why. He nods his head and the moment her fingers find his neck, the moment she strokes the first line, his line, his Omega wakes up. There is warmth where there shouldn’t be warmth, slick where there shouldn’t be slick around another Omega, definitely not someone sixteen years younger than he is. He lifts his hand, fingers circling her wrist and he pulls her arm away.

The air shifts. Loam and dander and wolves, howling, somewhere in the distance. His body reacts immediately to her nearness, her touch, and his heat blooms, surging over him in a sudden wave, _fuck_ _and fuck and fuck_. “Abigail move away.”

“I don’t want to,” she murmurs and reaches up again and touches his face.

His body only wants her closer. He leans in, dragging the rough of his beard along her jawline. Abigail brings her hand up, cupping his chin. A low, rumbling sound fills the air between them. Will drags his teeth along her neck. His breath is a sigh. Abigail presses her palm to his chest.

Warmth. Hand. Not Hannibal. Will’s eyes fly open.

“Hannibal!” Will bellows as he pushes Abigail away. Claws scrape at his insides and he knows his body. He knows what happens when an Alpha triggers his heat. “Hannibal!”

Then Abigail’s up and clawing at air, scrambling back and away from him, pushing herself back. A teapot crashes to the floor.

“Will?” His name a plaintive, confused wail.

Will’s Omega doesn’t want anything but to roll over, give in to whatever the Alpha wants. And that, his human forebrain knows, the part that is decent and good, knows that can’t happen.Even though she smells so fucking good and her eyes are golden and he knows her Alpha intimately, but that is Garret Jacob Hobbs. She is not her father.

Abigail whimpers and scurries back, shuffles away from him, the broken china a good enough border. “What’s happening to me?”

“I think—” Will says and then she wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand and tilts her head and the way she looks at him is all animal.

“Help me,” she whimpers, looking up at him.

“I can’t,” he spits out, and it’s fucking hilarious that his scar, his own fucking heat triggered this girl and can’t trigger his own goddamn mate. “You’re not a fucking Omega and I can’t come near you.”

The way Abigail looks at him makes him want to crawl towards her, hold onto her because her father was an Alpha and her father is a murderer,but instead he reaches back and twists his hands in the drapery like it’s enough to keep him still.

A shadow fills the room. Hannibal takes up the whole of the doorway. His hands are fists and violence.

 

The man moves faster than Will has ever seen him move. He tears through the room and grabs onto Abigail.She fights back, screaming at him to let her go, to help her, but Hannibal’s stronger than both of them put together and he holds her close. Whispers something in her ear before he turns his head.

“Alana! Get my bag.”

Alana moves swiftly, grabs the old leather satchel and throws it to him. It arcs over Hannibal’s desk and lands at his feet.With one hand around the girl he fumbles in his bag and pulls out a needle.“Stop, Abigail.”

For a moment the girl does and with his fingers and teeth, his body over the hers, he gets the cap off the syringe and jabs the sharp into Abigail’s neck. It only takes a second for her to go down.

Hannibal lifts his eyes to Will.

He is panting, his mouth is salt and his cock is hard and he tries to hide it from his Alpha. He curls up into a ball and the scent of slick wafts up from between his legs and he hides his face in the crook of his arm.

“Alana,” Hannibal calls out, “Will’s in heat. The girl needs to be in the other room.”

“Hannibal, we have to—”

“Go, Alana, now.”

Alana isn’t strong enough. “I can’t lift her.”

“Goddamnit,” Hannibal spits and he never, ever swears like this, in a way that suggests something's going wrong, and then his hand is on Will, a fistfull of t-shirt and hair, and he yanks Will towards him as if he’s nothing but a stray dog.

Hannibal is all beast. Will half-stands, stumbles forward, and when they get to the door Hannibal throws him to the floor.

“Your heat, for that Alpha.” Hannibal roars. “For a _child_.”

“I’m sorry,” Will whimpers.

Except Abigail is eighteen and female Alphas don’t knot the way males do, but nothing happened and Will claws at the floor. Tries to stand. To get away.

“Stay down.” Hannibal’s voice is a door slamming shut.

Will makes himself small. “Hannibal?”

“Alpha.”

_Shit._

Hannibal. Then it’s two more steps and Hannibal’s hands are on him, pulling him close and spinning him until he’s face down on the floor, held down by the weight of Hannibal’s foot on his back. Everything in Will stops fighting.

“You wanted her to fuck you.”

Will shakes his head. “I didn’t, no. I didn’t. I wouldn’t have—”

Hannibal’s foot moves to between Will’s legs, a dragging press. “Did you think about Hobbs? The way he fucked you? His hand inside you? Making you come for him?”

“I—”

But then Hannibal leans over and pulls him up by the hair, forces him up until he’s on hands and knees and there’s the weight of Hannibal’s hand on the back of Will's head, pushing his face down to the floorboards even as Hannibal’s other hand goes to his button, to his zipper and as he tears at Will’s jeans, forcing them down over his hips.

The man leans over, his breath to Will’s ear. “You are mine.”

There is the scent of dust and floor wax. There’s slick between his thighs and then it occurs to him that Hannibal.

Hannibal is jealous.

Hannibal is in fucking rut.

“Mount me,” Will whispers, and then Hannibal’s fingers are inside of him. Spreading him. Opening him. Fucking him.

“My little Omega whore.” Hannibal’s cock presses into the curve of Will’s ass in a brush of wool. “Should I put you out for any Alpha’s use?”

Will whimpers, shaking his head even as he widens his legs, lifts his ass. This is presenting. 

Hannibal unzips his pants and pushes them down. He’s still in his jacket and tie even as he grinds into Will, dragging his own hard cock through Will’s slick. “So quickly you beg to be fucked.”

“Please.” Will’s heat pushes at him, the ache in his groin blooms, becomes pain, and Will lets out a low, wanting moan.

“Don’t move.” Hannibal spreads him wider. Opens him. “Don’t so much as breathe.”

Will doesn’t.

Not even when Hannibal’s cock pushes him open. Not even when Hannibal slams into him in a sudden, brutal grunt that sends Will to his belly in a whimper. Hannibal fists Will’s hair, pulls back his head, and as Hannibal fucks him there's the feel of teeth over Will’s scent gland, the warm-wet feel of tearing skin and blood.

Will’s body contracts in a sudden burst of light.

Hannibal groans.Will is all useless, senseless noise as Hannibal comes in a roar, and as Will feels Hannibal’s warmth, there’s also the sudden, immediate swell of the man’s knot, an impossible sense of completeness, even as Hannibal stretches him open.

Will drops his forehead to the floor. Blood drips down his neck and come drips from his cock and he doesn’t remember his orgasm, but he must have come, because there’s another pool of semen between the floorboards that Will is probably have to going to scrub and if Hannibal asked he’d—.

“Clean it up,” Hannibal orders and Will shifts the tiniest bit and with his Alpha’s knot inside him, Will laps at the floor, tasting his own salt. 

#

Eventually, Hannibal’s knot deflates. Will lays dazed on the hardwood, sore and sated. Dried blood on his neck and an unfamiliar calm in his chest. He wipes spit away with the back of his hand and Hannibal. Hannibal is curled up behind him, still half dressed, and Will’s heat is faraway again and that’s different too.

“Did we just?” He asks even though he knows.

“Yes.” Hannibal nods into his hair. 

 _Bond_.

“Are you still?” Still in rut.

“Very much so,” Hannibal says, idly stroking Will’s chest. “But I can hold it back if I choose.”

Of course he can. “Is she okay?” Will asks, as he pulls Hannibal closer, tucking the man’s hand under his chin. “Did you know?”

Could Hannibal have known the girl was Alpha?

“I wondered,” Hannibal admits. “But I did not know.”

“She’s okay?”

“Yes, she’s okay.” Hannibal says. “Alana will make the appropriate calls. Abigail will sleep for a while, but she’ll be okay.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Will says. “I wouldn’t have let her.” Not just for Hannibal, for Abigail, too.

“No, you would not, for many reasons, but mostly,” Hannibal murmurs, nuzzling his neck. “Because you know to whom you belong.”

#

Will leans into Hannibal. They get dressed more quickly than either of them want, but there is Abigail and the shame Will feels, the latent distaste he has forwhat or who he is, the animal piece, the part of him that he didn’t ask for. The part of him that belongs to Hannibal now, the part Hannibal will keep safe.

Or not safe, if Hannibal prefers.

“I need to make sure she’s okay,” Will says.

“I will take you to her,” Hannibal promises. Will leans forward and kisses the palm of his hand.

#

Abigail is asleep in Hannibal’s spare room. Will sees the parallel, sees his own self asleep not in his Alpha’s bed where he belongs, but here in this spare room, as if the space between doors could have ever been enough to keep them apart.

He goes to the chair in the corner, drags the blanket over his lap and closes his eyes.

“Will?”

Abigail’s voice is a dream. Hazy and faraway. Will rubs away sleep. “Hey,” he says and then he realizes he has no idea how to navigate this. This conversation.

This experience. Abigail.

The fact that he is now fully bonded to Hannibal and that is a lifetime. He has so many things to write down in his stupid yellow notebook.

“I—” she starts and then her eyes fill and she’s wiping away tears.

Will fights the urge to go to her, to cradle her, to care for her. Hannibal’s sedatives may have calmed her rut, and bonding with Hannibal has silenced his heat, at least for now, but this is about as close as they should probably get. “It’s okay,” he says. “It wasn’t your fault. We. Nothing happened.”

Nothing is a lie. Nothing is a word used to brush away the truth.

“I feel different,” Abigail says.

“Me too,” he laughs. It’s not a laugh, not really.“Hannibal and I.”

“I think I heard,” she says and Will drops his head to hide the flush of his cheeks. But there’s also this:

“Anyway,” he starts and then sighs. “You’re safer here now, until you decide what to do.”

They can protect her now that Will’s Omega is otherwise spoken for.“Your Alpha won’t find me interesting anymore.”

Abigail scratches her tip of the nose. “Interesting is not the right word.”

“I know,” he says.

“Did you—” then she looks away. Will keeps quiet. Pulls up the blanket on his lap. “Did you feel the same with my dad?”

Jesus Christ. “No,” Will admits. “I wanted to, with your Dad.” The fuck is this conversation?

“Because you’re gay?”

It’s been a long time since he thought of himself that way. “I don’t think I’m gay, I don’t think I’m not gay. I think I just found the right mate and that’s what mattered.”

“Hannibal.”

Yeah. “I-” he has never, ever said this out loud, never said a thing of love and even though he wants to, he finds he can’t but instead he says, “I have a home in him.” And perhaps that is stronger. Perhaps home is more true than just _love_ , the word more fitting.

Floorboards. The telltale creak and Will glances at the doorway.

On the upside, Hannibal is smiling.Holding a tray of sandwiches and water and smiling.The man walks through the room without speaking. The tray goes to the night stand.

“May I?” He motions to the bed.

Abigail nods and so Hannibal sits and leans back into the headboard, crossing his legs at the ankle.

“I feel like we’re about to have The Talk.”

As if he and Hannibal are her fathers, now.

“We should talk,” Hannibal says.

“I practically attacked him,” Abigail whispers but Will shakes his head.

“No, you—”

“Will.” Hannibal lifts a hand.

Will stops talking.

“Your Alpha recognized Will’s oncoming heat and mis-interpreted it as interest.”

“Consent is a thing,” she says, as if reminding him.

“Yes,” Hannibal agrees. “And because Will did not consent, and because you were able to manage your Alpha,nothing happened that we will regret.”

Will notices the We. “You didn’t put me in danger, Hannibal.”

“I put Abigail in danger,” Hannibal says. “That was my mistake.”

“So what happens now?” She asks.

Will doesn’t know. Will is both surprised and not surprised when Hannibal says—

“If you don’t have anywhere to go, you may stay here.”

 

-FIN-

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay! Technically this is the end of this series, or is supposed to be, but I've said that before. I am always on team Murder Family, even if there's no murder. :D If I continue this series, I promise at no point will this move into Abigail being anything but a daughter figure in their lives. 
> 
> Thank you so much for the comments and the kudos. I hope you enjoyed.
> 
> -hX


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